Unqualified Offerings

Was set to outline a big-think piece based on recent developments touching Iran when I learned something inconvenient to my thesis. The Brits may not believe that Iran is providing weapons to insurgent groups. Excerpt from the article by Whitaker and Dave:
Subversion from nearby Iran has been blamed for a recent increase in attacks on […]

The Flying Spaghetti Monster Theory of Creation, as detailed in a letter to the Kansas State Board of Education. Excerpt:
I think we can all look forward to the time when these three theories are given equal time in our science classrooms across the country, and eventually the world; One third time for Intelligent Design, one […]

From AP:
WASHINGTON - The number of Iraqi battalions capable of combat without U.S. support has dropped from three to one, the top American commander in Iraq told Congress Thursday, prompting Republicans to question whether U.S. troops will be able to withdraw next year.
Via Laura Rozen, who is mystified: “I don’t understand how it’s going backwards.” […]

Sheer, mind-numbing repetition. Jim Hoagland offers his take on how George Bush must act to save his Presidency and what pops up in the all-important penultimate paragraph of the column?
Similar steps must be urged for Iraq, where Bush has overlooked corruption and incompetence on the part of Iraqi clients of the CIA while backing that […]

Sally the Camel has
90 humps
Sally the Camel has
90 humps
Sally the Camel has
90 humps
Cause Sally is
the spawn of Shub-Niggurath

Last month Kevin Drum and I, among others, wrote about the discovery of a 1999 FORSCOM regulation authorizing the deployment of service members who “confess” homosexuality to combat zones. It wasn’t obvious what to make of the regulation at the time. On the one hand, we had figures showing that “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” discharges […]

Brett strongly believed we had to save this morning’s IM conversation for posterity:
Jim Henley: And the Thunderbird icon still looks like a greeting card envelope wearing a ridiculous blue wig.
Brett Peters: LOL
Brett Peters: What do you think about the Firefox logo?
Jim Henley: It doesn’t suck nearly as much.
Jim Henley: It’s sort of cute. Not at […]

Tom Delay.

The Telegraph puts the best light possible on the situation in Basra:
And new details of last week’s violence have highlighted what many long suspected: Basra has fallen under the control of a cabal of renegade police commanders who have enforced a reign of terror in the city.
A cabal? May be. Seems like a pretty big […]

The SF Chronicle and others are reporting that a Marine spokesman says insurgents have evicted the residents of five Iraqi border towns in the mountains near Syria. CNN’s version:
The Marines have also received reports of fliers telling residents of Sa’dat, west of Qaim, to leave the city or die, said Davis, the commander of the […]

The official site for General Zod in 2008. Most importantly, Zod is not a sitting Senator.

Britain plans to fire the entire 25,000-man police force in Southern Iraq and “replace it with a new military-style unit capable of maintaining law and order,” according to Defense Minister John Reid as reported in an excellent roundup item by Tom Regan of the Christian Science Monitor.
I have no love to spare for the Basra […]

Near as I can tell, this very blog was the first place on all the internets you could learn of Carla Speed McNeil’s decision to take Finder to the web. Take that, Bad Signal! Take that, Engine! Take that, Beat! Take that, Great Curve!
Bwa, to coin a phrase. Bwa, and ha, and ha and ha […]

MY homies. Good stuff from Justin Logan on Taiwan’s insouciance about its own security and Gene Healy on America’s insouciance about untrammelled executive power to dispose of your life.
Have I mentioned lately how proud I am to know these gentlemen?

The less snarky and more dire point that comes out of the previous item is that the US Army, and probably the military as a whole, has become a deeply corrupt institution over the last couple of years. The direct cause is bad leadership, starting with the political appointees in the Pentagon and extending to […]

WASHINGTON — When Army Capt. Ian Fishback told his company and battalion commanders that soldiers were abusing Iraqi prisoners in violation of the Geneva Convention, he says, they told him those rules were easily skirted.
When he wrote a memo saying Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was wrong in telling Congress that the Army follows the […]

Borowitz.
And from last week: ZELLWEGER SAYS CHESNEY LIED ABOUT SADDAM’S WMD.